MTN Group’s mobile money platform moved $330 billion in the first half of 2026, more than a third up on the same period last year, as the operator reported what it called a record margin and announced a share buyback of up to R6 billion.
The Johannesburg-listed group said on 25 August 2026 that service revenue reached R115 billion in constant-currency terms, a 17.5% rise, while EBITDA before once-off items came to R56 billion, up almost a quarter.
MTN reports in rand, and the figures in this article are as published by the company. Constant-currency growth strips out exchange-rate movement, which matters for a group earning across 19 markets and reporting in a currency that few of them use.
Fintech is now the headline number
The mobile money business carried 70.8 million active users in the period, served by 2.3 million active merchants and 1.4 million agents. Transaction volume reached 13 billion, up 17%, against transaction value up by more than a third.
The gap between those two growth rates is the interesting part. Volume rose 17%, while value rose by more than 33%, indicating that the average transaction size grew substantially. That usually indicates mobile money moving beyond airtime top-ups and small peer-to-peer transfers into merchant payments, remittances and business flows, which is the shift MTN has been arguing for since it began reporting fintech separately.
MTN brought in Ant International in June to help build a MoMo super-app, a signal of the same intent.
Scale, and where it sits
The group closed the half with 317.7 million customers across 19 markets and 179 million active data users. Capital expenditure was nearly R20 billion.
Data users at 179 million, against a total of 317.7 million customers, mean roughly 44% of MTN’s base is not yet an active data user. That is the number to watch across the next several results. Data and fintech are where the revenue growth is, and the unconverted 56% is both the opportunity and the reason coverage alone does not translate into digital participation.
The buyback
MTN said it would repurchase approximately 31 million ordinary shares for an aggregate consideration of up to R6 billion.
A buyback is a statement about capital allocation. It says the group has cash it does not currently intend to deploy into the network or into acquisitions, and would rather return it to shareholders. Read alongside capital expenditure of nearly R20 billion for the half, it suggests MTN considers its investment programme adequately funded and its balance sheet comfortable enough to return capital at the same time.
“The Group’s overall performance in the period reflects strong conversion of the commercial momentum we see across our markets into growth in earnings, cash flow and returns,” said Ralph Mupita, president and chief executive of MTN Group.
Continuity with the full year
The result follows the pattern MTN set in March, when it posted record 2025 results and launched its Ambition 2030 strategy. The half-year figures suggest that trajectory held through the first six months of 2026.
MTN did not report headline earnings per share or free cash flow in the announcement covered here, and this article does not estimate either metric. Those figures appear in the full interim results, and they will show whether the margin expansion translates into distributable earnings rather than accounting improvements.
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